R.A.D.I.C.A.L. Thoughts

“In my experience, as people start to simplify their lives, the things that really matter naturally come to the forefront.” Living the Simple Life by Elaine St. James

Nothing is simple about midlife divorce. In fact one of the things that made me most upset was that suddenly everything became complicated. During a midlife divorce we are inundated with decisions to make, things to do, stuff to separate, schedules to figure out and on and on and on. It’s overwhelming. One of the things that Elaine St. James suggests in her book, Living the Simple Life, is to identify the top five priorities in your life right now. By prioritizing, decision-making becomes easier. Distractions are given less attention. Before our divorce journey, some of our priorities might have been the same. However, now, we have to figure out how to flesh them out in light of our new situation. One of our priorities might have been to be a positive influence in the lives of our children. Now we must accomplish that goal in new ways. We have to deal with sharing our children with an ex-spouse and his girlfriend. We have to find creative, effective ways of accomplishing those few true things that we want our life to be about. Today, try to verbalize and get on paper your top life priorities. Then start making a list under every one of those priorities of concrete actions you can do to make those priorities reality. Having those goals in the forefront of your thinking, clarifies things. Read the list every morning and see if that doesn’t help with all of those decisions you have to make.

“I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13 (NIV)